Med School Enrollment in 2015 Will Miss Goal

With a physician shortage looming in its sights, in 2006 the Association of American Medical Colleges set a goal of boosting first-year med school enrollment by 30% between 2002’s baseline and 2015.
It’s going to miss that target by a few years, the AAMC said today. In its 2009 med school enrollment survey, the group’s Center for Workforce Studies said enrollment will be up by 23% in 2015, to 20,281, and up a projected 30% in 2018. Enrollment at med schools and osteopathic med schools combined, however, will rise to 26,550 in 2015, up 36% from 2002.

That would seem to be good news for the physician shortage, but the real bottleneck for future doctors is the number of residency slots. U.S. med school graduates vie for those spots with international graduates and osteopaths, and that competition is likely to heat up, the AAMC report says.

Read the full article in The Wall Street Journal, or click here:
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2010/05/10/med-school-enrollment-in-2015-will-miss-goal/